“The trouble with trade wars, like shooting wars, is that once they start you never know how they’re going to end,”
the Journal noted
in an editorial scorching Trump. “The enemy gets a vote, and sometimes events escalate in ugly fashion. Take Friday, which saw China retaliate for Donald Trump’s recent tariffs, Mr. Trump blow a gasket, markets tank, and Mr. Trump impose even more tariffs.”

The newspaper said Trump then “began tweeting like a bull in a china shop,” and scoffed at his “order” that American companies no longer have anything to do with the world’s second-largest economy.

“Order? Somebody should tell Chairman Trump this isn’t the People’s Republic of America,” the editorial added. U.S. businesses have been trying to shift production out of China to avoid tariffs, “but supply chains that have been developed over decades can’t be uprooted overnight. And no other country has China’s huge relatively skilled workforce, infrastructure and network of suppliers,” the newspaper noted.